Fluor’s 2nd-Quarter Profit, Revenue Increase

Fluor Corp. said Tuesday that profit for its latest quarter was $42 million, up from earnings of $32.4 million for the same period last year.

Revenue for the big engineering and construction concern rose to $2 billion from $1.5 billion. Earnings per share were 51 cents, up from 40 cents.

Stock analysts said there were no surprises in the report for the company’s second fiscal quarter, which ended April 30.

The latest results included both a one-time expense and a one-time gain. The expense was setting aside $9.2 million after taxes for Fluor’s coal-mining unit, A.T. Massey. That is what Fluor anticipates it will cost to settle a dispute with the pension funds of two mine workers’ unions.

The gain came from the conclusion of a federal tax audit for late 1984 through 1986 that resulted in an additional $12.6 million in earnings.

Discounting those one-time earnings and expenses, second-quarter net income was $38.6 million, or 47 cents a share.

Particularly good news, said stock analyst Herbert E. Hart in the San Francisco office of brokerage S.G. Warburg & Co., was that Fluor rounded up as many contracts--$2.3 billion worth--during the quarter as it did during the same time last year. And last year was a fairly good one, too, said Hart, considering the weak state of the international construction market.

Fluor’s chairman, Les McCraw, said in a statement Tuesday: “While growth in most industrialized economies around the world remains fragile and capital investment trends continue to be somewhat lackluster, (our) broad diversity has again enabled us to deliver a respectable level of new contract awards.”

Fluor’s backlog of work also rose during the quarter--to $15 billion from $12 billion a year earlier.

All that means Fluor should continue to grow over the next few years at least as fast as its competitors, said the stock analyst.

Profit margins, though, were smaller, Hart said. That is because last year Fluor was doing more engineering and preliminary design work, which is more profitable, for projects that this year began the less-profitable construction phase.

For the first six months of its fiscal year, the company’s profit rose to $77.6 million, or 94 cents a share, from $28.3 million, or 35 cents a share, for the same period a year earlier. Six-month revenue rose to $3.8 billion from $3.1 billion.